Illustrations of a Law of Evolution of Thought [pp. 373-393]

ILLUSTRATIONS OF A LAW OF EVOLUTION OF T-IOUGHT.387
dominates, and the result is like gossamer web, spun almost
wholly from within; in the other there is a due proportion between the two factors, the one forming the warp, the other the
woof of the closely woven fabric of science.
We sit at the feet of our good mother Nature to learn the
solution of her riddles. The children of Aristotle, when she propounds a riddle, all too eager quickly cry out each, "I know, I
know," and guessing guess wrong, or at least only half right.
The children of Bacon, on the contrary, eagerly but patiently
watch her face for a suggestion of the truth, catch up and ponder
on every word which falls from her lips, ply her again and again
with indirect questions, and thus by slow degrees gather, tease,
almost extort from her, the truth. The one philosophy, more
eager and ambitious, seeks to impose its own laws on Nature; the
other, more humble and patient, is willing to accept such laws as
Nature herself reveals. In the words of Bacon himself, the one
is the eager "anticipation of Nature," the other the patient " interpretation of NVature."
We are apt to regard old philosophies and old theories as
utterly exploded, annihilated, and new theories and philosophies
as formed ab initio as it were by spontaneous generation in their
place. But not so usually or even perhaps ever. As in the
evolution of the organic kingdom some forms indeed become
extinct, but many are transmuted into new and higher forms, and
all the new forms are thus derived from the old, so in the evolution of thought some forms of thought indeed become extinct and leave no trace in the form of progeny, but others are
transmuted into new and higher forms, and all the newforms
are thus derivedfrom the old. Thus Aristotle's method is not
dead-will never die. In the evolution of the general theory of
method it was transmuted into the higher form of Bacon's, but
its spirit still lives, and the method is still used in the earlier attempts to explain all the problems of nature. Provisional hypotheses are always conceived in the spirit and constructed by the
method of the Aristotelian induction, while the more perfect and
permanent theories are conceived in the spirit and wrought out
by the surer method of the Baconian induction. In many complex subjects such as sociology, psychology, etc., we are still
largely under the dominion of Aristotle's method. Aristotle